September 17, 2010

The people who say organ music gives a ballpark the feel of a cathedral are being supplanted by the likes of Guillen, the White Sox manager who grew up in Venezuela, where he said organ music was not part of the game-day experience.

Guillen compared Faust’s music to the vuvuzela, the South African horn. “At the beginning of the season, it’s fun,” he said. “Now in June or July, it gets old.”

Q: What do you make of Flower’s year? Do you think its too early to call him a bust? And what do you make of Phegley? Thanks in advance.

A: Not liking what Flowers did this year….I think he went backward. not a bust yet, but heading in that direction. Phegley had limited playing time due to injury, but it looks like he’s got strikeout issues too. He’ll be in the Arizona Fall League and I hope to see him there.

Konerko, who homered against Pavano his next time up, said he did not believe the pitch was intentional, but he did appreciate teammate Mark Buehrle hitting Twins’ first baseman Michael Cuddyer later.

“I don’t need to see Mark do that to know he protects his guys,” said Konerko, whose swollen upper lid still made it difficult to talk Friday. “He’s the one guy over the years that not only will go out and do it, but gets it done.”

Offense: With a quiet load, and strong, athletic stance, Saladino makes an excellent first impression at the plate. When swinging the bat well, Saladino keeps his hands inside the ball allowing him to scorch line drives to left field. On occasion however, his load will become long forcing his pull arm to extend to a locked position. While it didn’t happen often, Saladino had great difficulty adjusting to pitches above the letters when it did.

In game action, Saladino did not show much aptitude for taking pitches the other way, but consistently made solid contact and showed the potential for gap power. His quick wrists and level swing plane are tailor-made for doubles into the left-center field gap. I have some concern with his pitch recognition as he seemed to struggle picking up decent offspeed pitches and sat “dead red” for most of the series. This led to his swinging and missing more than a hitter with his approach probably should which explains his K% of more than 22%.

“I will say this: In my 10 years in this chair, I’ve never had a free agent to be, especially one that has had the past success and the present year success that he’s had, handled it in such a graceful, classy, professional way. I had to make a statement earlier this year that I don’t know where we’re going to end up, where our revenues are, where our payroll is headed in relation to all the other things we have to do, so we can’t engage in any talks for extensions for anyone.

“He has respected that and been a prince about that. And he’s had every right to question and ask what’s his future. If that question were to be asked, I’d have to say ‘I don’t know.’ All the numbers and projections aren’t in. I’ll get a payroll number at some point in November, I’d imagine. And then we’d have to see how the team fits as a whole, and he’s been here long enough to know we’ve never valued one individual piece more than the team as a whole. If you do that, you can start the spiral that will take you a decade to recover from.

“Now I said that to say this: He is valued on that field, on the bench, on the clubhouse, on the bus, in the hotel, and has just been selfless and one of the best guys you can have around here for a long time, so these are the type guys you would like to finish their careers here.

Like most White Sox bullpen guys this year, Chris Sale throws hard, with an average fastball velocity of 96 mph in the majors. This has translated to plenty of strikeouts (21 in only 15.2 innings). The walks are outrageously high (10 in 15.2 innings) but as a reliever and a high strikeout pitcher, those walks can be easily masked (see Carlos Marmol and The Joker’s bank robbery crew. Masks. Get it? Never mind).

Along with those high strikeouts comes a decently high propensity to get ground balls with a 46.9 GB percentage and a 1.15 GB/FB percentage. High strikeouts + a lot of grounders = fantasy (and I guess reality) success. This is Sabermetrics 201 (I teach the advanced class).

I view the fact that Sale has not given up a home run as a bad sign. I know it’s the Gambler’s Fallacy to say someone “is due,” especially in baseball, but Sale still has a decent propensity for fly balls and I don’t really trust any pitcher with a decent fly ball percentage (currently 40.6 for Sale) who calls The Cell home (it’s second among major league parks in home runs given up. And unfortunately I don’t have access to super secret THT data about fly ball suppression and such, so I have to go off what ESPN’s Park Factors tell me. Also, Paul Konerko is not the only one hitting those dingers).

So I think Sale will give up at least one home run before the year ends and with the small sample he will pitch on the year, I expect that ERA to go up. But how bad is it really to have your ERA go up from .57 to 2.00? Just ask Ubaldo Jimenez; he’s good with it. …

Sale, slinging his fastball at an average of 96.2 MPH while mixing in low-80′s sliders and upper-80′s changeups, has struck out 23 batters in 17.2 IP. While he has issued 10 walks to go with all those K’s, the Florida Gulf Coast product has a 3.19 xFIP in a tiny sample.